AND VEGETABLES. 25 



natural and beneficial to them, and flourishing according 

 to their success in satisfying their wants, may not the 

 €Xercise of their vital functions be attended with some 

 degree of sensation, however low, and some consequent 

 share of happiness ? Such a supposition accords with all 

 the best ideas we can form of the Divine Creator ; nor 

 could the consequent uneasiness which plants must suf- 

 fer, no doubt in a very low degree likewise, from the 

 depredations of animals, bear any comparison with their 

 enjoyment on the whole. However this may be, the 

 want of sensation is most certainly not to be proved 

 wiih regard to Vegetables, and therefore of no use as a 

 practical means of distinguishing them, in doubtiul 

 eases, from Animals. 



Some Philosophers* have made a locomotive power 

 peculiarly characteristic of Animals, not being aware of 

 the true nature of those half-animated beings called 

 Corals and Corallines, which are fixed, as immoveably 

 as any plants, to the bottom of the sea, while indeed 

 many living vegetables swim around them, unattached 

 to the soil, and nourished by the water in which ihey 

 float.f Some have characterized Animals as nourished 

 by their internal, and Vegetables by their external sur- 

 face, the latter having no such thing as an internal 

 stomach. This is ingenious and tolerably correct ; but 

 the proofs of it must fail with respect to those minute 

 and simply. constructed animals the Polypes, and the 

 lower tribes of Worms, whose feelers, put forth info 

 the water, seem scarcely different from roots seeking 



* Jungius, Boerhaave, Ludwig and many others. 



t Dr. Alston, formerly professor of botany at Edinburgh. 



